President Trump’s vision for overhauling federal workforce training programs includes greater use of apprenticeships to fill the jobs that he expects to materialize as companies reshore their manufacturing operations. The President unveiled his ideas April 23 in Executive Order 14278 — “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future.”
The order gives the Secretaries of Labor, Education, and Commerce 90 days to devise a worker investment and development strategy that:
- recommends ways to consolidate programs, identify ineffective programs, and make suggestions for reforming or eliminating them;
- identifies opportunities to upskill incumbent workers; and
- identifies alternative credentials to a college degree.
Within 120 days, the three Secretaries must submit a plan for expanding the registered apprenticeship program to include more than 1 million active apprentices. The Secretaries must identify methods for expanding registered apprenticeships to new industries and for improving transparency about participants’ earnings and employment.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), our affiliated nonprofit membership association, can read more here.